Organisers Wrapped Up Design Week Upbeat

Helsinki Design Week’s Director Kari Korkman reflects on the week, which offered new insight into design under the theme Do Touch! “I have a good feeling about this year’s Design Week,” Korkman says, “despite the challenging starting point because of the economic downturn.” Dedicated to bringing design close to the everyman, Helsinki Design Week 2009 from September 4th to 13th had many highpoints. According to Korkman, one of the highpoints was Open Studios, where designers individually open their doors to visitors. “This is an example of how Helsinki Design Week works. The programmes stem from individual initiatives, which snowball into something larger,” he says. “The design outlet sale Design Market was a go-go event, and the opening of the main event, Designpartners, was exhilarating,” Korkman adds. .. Surprises and laughter from the unexpected Pecha Kucha is a presentation format where presenters make concise statements showing 20 images for 20 seconds apiece. Helsinki Design Week’s Pecha Kucha Night on September 9th brought onto the stage nine presenters who offered the audience novel viewpoints to design. Dutch designer Marcel te Brake likes to show something that is not there. One of his concepts started from the idea of women’s handbag – many women like to carry handbags, not to carry things in them, but just for the sake of the bag. He showed one of his ConfusiousBags, a mere silhouette of a handbag that serves the purpose. Riitta Ikonen, a London-based Finnish performance artist, presented some of her work including a huge pink earthworm dug in soil in a London park, describing her work as “unexpressed anger at nothing really”. Finnish illustrator Kasper Strömman talked about nonsensical signs. One of his showcases was the emergency door instructions on a commercial aircraft that no one could interpret to open the emergency door.